I stopped calling movies slow a long time ago, but Ato Bautista’s Blackout is sloooow. A psychological thriller about an alcoholic landlord (nicely played by Robin Padilla, complete with greasy hair and ugly glasses) prone to blackouts, the film could use faster pacing to communicate the main character’s rising panic — either that, or the [...]
The Number 23 isn’t unwatchable by any means, but its particular brand of awfulness deserves a little explanation. Directed by affable hack Joel Schumacher, the movie is part of what I’d call the post-Memento film, featuring unreliable narrators, plots that twist upon each other, suitably grimy production design that screams “I must be insane because [...]
Lee Yoon-Ki’s Ad Lib Night was easily the best film I’d seen at the San Francisco International Film Festival (after Pedro Costa’s Colossal Youth). It’s a rather moving character study, but I was caught off guard by the initial almost-comic premise: a young woman is stopped in the street by two strange men who ask [...]
1. No time to write a real write-up, but Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse is up there with Bong Joon-ho’s The Host (and Philip Gröning’s Into Great Silence) as one of my favorites this year so far. (And in case anyone wanted to know: QT’s was better than RR’s. In fact, I’ll go out [...]
As usual, these include (older) films I got to see only in 2006. In alphabetical order: – The Descent (dir. Neil Marshall, England, 2005) – Linda Linda Linda (dir. Nobuhiro Yamashita, Japan, 2005) – Tropical Malady (dir. Apichatpong Weesethakul, Thailand, 2004) – Workingman’s Death (dir. Michael Glawogger, Austria, 2005) And three runners-up: – Cavite (dir. [...]
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Posted 24 August 2008
† Benito Vergara
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notes § review
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Tagged: aja, alexandre aja, apichatpong weerasethakul, cavite, dela llana, gamazon, glawogger, high tension, jia, jia zhangke, linda linda linda, marshall, michael glawogger, neil marshall, platform, the descent, tropical malady, weerasethakul, workingman's death, yamashita
I’m clearly warped. I didn’t expect to enjoy Eli Roth’s Hostel; part of my refusal to see it when it first came out was the fact that international debates on torture were going on at the time, and to derive entertainment from what is essentially snuff-porn seemed politically reprehensible, and still does. But I did [...]
So is Neil Marshall’s The Descent the best horror film (I’ve seen) since Sadako crawled out of a TV in 1998? It may very well be. Wonderfully simple in its setup (and narrative: six women in a cave, and they’re not alone), The Descent is a masterpiece of unrelieved tension and claustrophobia. (The fact that [...]
Or, a lesser film by one of my favorite directors, shot by one of my favorite cinematographers, featuring a disaffected emotional cipher of a Don Juan who is unable to truly connect with people around him and is on a quest for something he is not entirely sure about, with laconic dialogue, strict attention to [...]
I didn’t get to go out and see many movies this year, but here are four excellent ones: href=”http://filmeyeballsbrain.com/2008/08/23/the-best-movies-i-saw-all-year-2005-edition/”>
Your flight crew would like to make the following ten helpful suggestions and observations for your maximum enjoyment of Snakes on a Plane: href=”http://filmeyeballsbrain.com/2008/08/23/david-r-ellis-and-lex-halaby-snakes-on-a-plane-2006/”>
Some random thoughts — actually, questions — which I wrote right after seeing Robert Bresson’s Lancelot du Lac last week: It was a choice between Mean Girls and Lancelot du Lac, and the latter won. (I was also trying to console myself for not seeing “Spamalot” last week with Bulletproof Vest.) I’m still trying to [...]
(Image stolen from Beyazperde.) Not much about Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins either: people have said it’s the best of the Batman franchise — followed almost always by “Which isn’t saying much,” although in this case it is. It’s an excellent popcorn movie, and there’s real visual pleasure to be had at the glorious mess of [...]
(Image stolen from Le Quotidien du Cinema.) There’s not much I can write about Hayao Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle that The Former Makeweight hasn’t already written, in a series of finely detailed (and, as she herself claims, obsessive — I mean that in jest, of course) entries, on her blog Getaway. href=”http://filmeyeballsbrain.com/2008/08/22/hayao-miyazaki-howls-moving-castle-2005/”>
“I hope you don’t think this film is about hell on earth,” Michael Glawogger told the audience before the screening of his 2005 documentary Workingman’s Death. It’s hard to see why not: his film — easily the best I’ve seen so far at the San Francisco Film Festival — is a headlong journey into the [...]
In Ian Gamazon and Neill dela Llana’s terrific thriller, Cavite, the Filipino American filmmakers take the tired cliches of the genre and craft an exceptional film. The plot isn’t anything you haven’t seen before, from Cellular to Red Eye (the only one I’ve seen of the four) to Nick of Time to Phone Booth: a [...]
The Wily Filipino